GROUP 5

Members:
- Huỳnh Nguyễn Bảo Châu
- Thiên Thành Lam
- Nguyễn Quỳnh Như
- Nguyễn Thùy Dương

Topic: BUSINESS IN THE UK

1. Earning money: working life

- There is a lack of enthusiasm for work, especially among the upper class who associate leisure
with aristocracy.
- Attitudes towards work are slowly changing, but the connection between class distinctions and
types of work still exists.
- Job seekers can look for work through newspapers, local job centers, and privately-run
employment agencies, all of which are now accessed on the Internet.
- There has been a shift in work opportunities for both men and women due to the decline of heavy
industry.

Labor Relations: a glossary.

When employees and management have a dispute, they may opt for arbitration, where an independent
investigator resolves the issue.

2. Work organizations:

- The organization representing employers in private industry is called the Confederation of British
Industry (CBI), which holds significant influence over trade unions and the government.
- However, union membership has been on a decline since 1979. The leader of the TUC (Trades
Union Congress) held significant power.
- The decline of unions may be attributed to an increase in female and part-time workers
- It is worth mentioning the National Farmers' Union (NFU), which operates separately from the
TUC.

21st century jobs:

In the 21st century, the report from 2006 highlights the growth in jobs related to physical appearance,
such as hairdressers, beauticians, personal trainers, manicurists, and baldness experts.

3/ Public and private industry

 - The modernisation of business and industry happened later in Britain than it did in other
western European countries. It was not until the 1960s that large corporations started to
dominate and that management class trained at business school arose.
- British industry performed poorly during the decades following the Second World War (some
people blamed this on the characteristics previously mentioned) . In contrast, British agriculture
was very successful. In this field of activity, large scale organization has been more common
in Britain than in other European countries for quite a long time.
- As in all European countries, the economic system in Britain is a mixture of private and
public enterprise. From 1945 until 1980, the general trend was for the state to have more and
more control. Various industries become nationalized, especially those concerned with the
production and distribution of energy. By 1980, pure capitalism probably formed a smaller
part of the economy than in any other country in western Europe.
- From 1980, the trend started going in the other direction.
+ A major part of the philosophy of the Conservative government of the 1980s was to
let ‘market forces’ rule (which meant restricting the freedom of business as little as
possible) and to turn state-owned companies into companies owned by individual
members of the public instead. This approach was a major part of the thinking of
Thatcherism (Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister at that time).
+ In addition, local government authorities were encouraged to contract out their
responsibility for services to commercial organizations. At that time of writing,
virtually the only services left in government hands are strictly social ones such as
education, social welfare and health care. Pure capitalism forms a larger part of the
economy than in any other country in western Europe.
- The British economy has performed rather well in the last two decades. However, it has also
had negative effects.
+ Firstly, the privatization of services which western people now regard as essential
has necessitated the creation of various public watchdog organizations with
regulatory powers over the sector which they monitor. For example, Ofcom monitors
the privatized communications industry (including television, radio, and
telecommunications) and Ofwat monitors the privatized water companies.
+ Secondly, it has contributed to the widening gap between rich and poor. Letting
“market forces” rule means that there are more opportunities for people to make money,
as both shareholders and employees. But it also means there are fewer safety nets and less
job security for those who have not made money.
4/ Distribution of wealth
- In the early 1970s, Britain had one of the most equitable distributions of wealth in western
Europe. However, by the early 1990s, this landscape had shifted drastically, with Britain
becoming one of the least equitable. The rich became richer, while the poor remained stagnant.
- A survey in 2007 highlighted a decline in the number of people who were 'average', that is,
neither rich nor poor. And despite overall economic growth, the survey also showed an increasing
number of households were 'breadline poor'; that is, they just had enough money for basic
necessities like food and heating.
 - There is an interesting fact that, British tend not to show off their wealth or feel ashamed of
being poor. Of course, they don’t like being poor, but they don't feel obliged to hide the fact.
That's why class and wealth cannot be considered the same thing in Britain.
- Despite the obvious gap between rich and poor, only a few of them feel it’s urgent to narrow it.
It seems that people just like to grumble about the rich but don't want to do anything about it. And
sometimes the lavish spending of the rich even gets advertised as a social service.
- The increase in wealth disparity can be attributed to changes in income tax rates. Over the
decades, the basic income tax rate has fluctuated, currently standing at 20%, down from 40% in
the 1960s. Simultaneously, the top income tax rate has decreased from 98% to 40%. This
highlights a reduction in the tax burden on high earners. This, coupled with the trend that best-
paid jobs see faster pay increases than lower-paid jobs, has resulted in a widening gap in take-
home pay between different income brackets.
- Overall, most British people today are economically comfortable, with only a minority
struggling financially. And because of this, it becomes challenging for the poor to change their
condition through the political process. This disparity also shows the complexity of the economic
landscape in Britain.
5/ Using money: finance and investment
Wealth (and poverty) are relative concepts. Britain is still, along with its neighbours in western Europe,
one of the wealthiest places in the world. The empire has gone, the great manufacturing industries have
gone, but London is still one of the centres of the financial world.
When people want to invest a lot of money, what matters to them is an atmosphere of stability and a
feeling of personal trust. These are the qualities to be found in 'the City'. This is the phrase used to refer
to financial institutions and the people who work in them.
● As regards stability, many of the city's financial institutions can point to a long and uninterrupted
history. Some of them have directors from the same family which started them.
● As regards trust, the city has a reputation for habits of secrecy that might be thought undesirable
in other aspects of public life but which in financial dealings become an advantage. In this
context, 'secrecy is translated into 'discretion'
Although more than half of the British population has money invested in the city indirectly. To most
people, money is just a matter of the cash in their pockets and their account with one of the high street'
banks.
The high street banks
At the time of writing, the banks which have a branch in almost every town in Britain are Lloyds TSB,
HSBC, Barclays Bank, and The Royal Bank of Scotland.
Currency and cash
The currency of Britain is the pound sterling, whose symbol is '£', always written before the specified
amount. Informally, a pound is sometimes called 'a quid', so £20 might be expressed as 'twenty quid'.
There are 100 pence (written 'p', pronounced 'pea') in a pound.
People were not enthusiastic about the change to what they called 'new money’. For a long time
afterwards, the question "What's that in old money?" was used to imply that what somebody had just said
was too complicated to be clear.
6/ Spending money: shopping
 - The British are not very adventurous shoppers. They like reliability and buy brand-name
goods wherever possible- preferably with the price clearly marked, so there is a very high
proportion of the country’s shops being branches of chain stores.
- Visitors from northern European countries are sometimes surprised by the shabbiness of
shop-window displays, even in prosperous areas. This is not basically a sign of economic
depression. It is just that the British do not demand art in their shop windows. On the positive
side, visitors are also sometimes struck by the variety of types of shop. Most shops are chain
stores but among those that are not, there is much individuality. Independent shop owners feel no
need to follow conventional ideas about what a particular shop does and doesn’t sell.
- In general, the British have been rather slow to take on the idea that shopping might
actually be fun. A clear majority of British people said that they aimed to go into a shop, grab
what they want and get out again as quickly as they can. This is perhaps why supermarkets and
hypermarkets in Britain are flourishing. In these places you can get everything in one place in as
short a time as possible.
- Many also sell clothes, shoes, kitchen utensils and electrical goods. These are, of course as
elsewhere in Europe, located mostly outside town centers. In some cases, the country’s chain
stores have followed them there into specially built shopping centers. Most of them covered.
About a third of all shop scales in Britain take place in these locations.
- The area in town where the local shops are concentrated is known as the high street (the
American equivalent is ‘Main Street’. British high streets have felt the effects of the move
towards out-of-town shopping. In the worst-affected towns, as many as a quarter of the shops are
vacant. But high streets have often survived by adapting. In larger towns, shops have tended to
become either more specialist or to sell especially cheap goods. Many have become charity shops
and discount stores. Many of the central streets are now reserved for pedestrians, so that they are
more pleasant to be in.
- Most small high streets still manage to have at least one representative of the various kinds
of conventional food shops. The survival of the high streets has been helped by the fact that
department stores have been comparatively slow to move out of town. There is one other
popular shopping location in Britain, this is a shop itself in a residential area, normally
referred to as the corner shop. These often sell various kinds of food, but they are not always
general grocers.
7/ Shop opening hours
- The normal time for shops to open is 9 a.m. Large supermarkets stay open all day until
about 8 p.m (and some stay open 24 hours). Most small shops stay open all day and then close
at 5.30 p.m or a bit later. In fact, shop opening hours have become more varied than they used
to be. In some areas, the local authorities are encouraging high street shops to stay open very late
on some evenings as a way of injecting new life into their town centers.
- However, the most significant change in recent years has been in regard to Sundays. By the early
1990s, many shops, including chain stores, were opening on some Sundays, especially in the
period before Christmas. In doing this, they were taking risks with the law. Sometimes they
were taken to court, sometimes they weren’t because the rules were so old and confused that
nobody really knew what was and what wasn’t legal. On one side will keep Sunday special, a
group of people from various Christian churches and trade unions. They argued that
Sunday should be special, a day of rest, a day for all the family to be together. They also
feared that Sunday opening would mean that shop workers would be forced to work too many
hours. On the other side people from women’s and customer groups. They argued that
working women needed more than one day in which to rush around doing the shopping. In
any case, they argued, shopping was also something that the whole family could do together,
Nowadays, small shops can open on Sundays for as long as they like, but large shops and
supermarkets can only open for a maximum of six hours.